Market Profiling: Farmers Plaza, Araneta Center Cubao

Submitted to: Mr. Jose Luis Liongson

Submitted by: Jenevieve Shaleena Limqueco Marya Patricia Katigbak Beatrice Ng Alyssa Kaye M. Talledo

October 12, 2013

I. Findings
The stores located in the Farmers Plaza are mostly small retail enterprises and micro retail type of businesses. The stores profiled were in the industry of wholesale

and retail, food service, photo service and also personal care. In every store, a respondent is chosen and was asked about things concerning their Philhealth, health insurance and some other personal matters. Our respondents positions in the businesses are diverse. We were able to interview some owners, branch managers, inventory manager, salesperson, officer-in-charge and some service crew. Even though their place of work is in Cubao, the interviewees reside in different places like Pasig, Marikina, Rizal, Quezon City, Manila and a few from Cubao. As we consolidated our data, the employees working in the stores ranged from 2 - 10 and one outlier, which is Abenson with 27 employees in that specific branch. We noticed that more than half of the respondents or 27 out of 40 (67.5%) are registered in PhilHealth but only 1 out of 40 (2.5%) has health insurance. And when asked, what hospital/clinic they usually do their check ups or be confined when sick, most of their answers are anywhere convenient or available, and seven answered that they dont really go to clinics or hospitals for check ups, but some still have their own respective hospitals like St. Lukes Medical Center, East Avenue and Fatima. Out of 40, only 4 businesses gives health insurances to the employees and out of those 4, only 2 gives health insurance to all of the employees, the other 2 only gave health insurances to half of their employees which are the regulars. Only 9 out of 40 (22.5%) of the stores sourced their employees from agencies and out of the 9, only 2 of the agencies pay their pre-employment physical exam and for others, the expense was out of the pockets of the employee. When the respondents were asked if they were willing to pay P300 to P900 Value Card that covers 3 to 12 month period which allows them to: have unlimited free check-ups with a family medicine doctor and allows them and their dependents to deduct other health treatment from the card, 23 out of 40 (57.5%) said yes, 6 out of 40 (15%) said maybe and the rest said no. Some of the respondents that said no told us that they usually do not get sick so, it would be a waste of money.

II. Recommendations
We encountered some problems while surveying, like there was one time, where a guard approached us while we were asking one of the service crew in the foodcourt and the guard told us that we are not allowed to survey in the area and that we needed a permit from the management to survey around the stores of Farmers Plaza. There are also some stores that are not allowed to disclose any information unless there was a notice from their main office that they can answer the questions. We think it is better if there was a formal letter that we can show to the establishments that this survey is an official school requirement so it would be easier for us to convince them to allow us interview them. At first when we asked them if we can interview them, most of them were shy to answer questions so our strategy was not like a question and answer, we did the survey like a conversation and remember the important details so that it will only be short and would not take their time working so after the conversation, thats where we place their answers in the questionnaire. So we recommend that you find ways where you can get the information you need in a manner that the interviewee will be comfortable. We went to Farmers Plaza around 10 oclock in the morning so that there will still be less people in the mall and the employees are still not that busy. But we still finished surveying at about 1 oclock in the afternoon already because we also had a hard time locating the stores. So, we recommend that it would be best to go early to the malls and double check the proper location of the store you are looking for (floor and near establishments). When we surveyed the employees, sometimes they do not know the answers to our questions so we recommend to ask for the manager to survey if he/she is around because managers are more knowledgeable about these types of questions. Also, we recommend that the questions used in the survey be less complex and be easily understood and answered so that it will not take too much of the interviewees time since the ones we are interviewing are in the middle of their work.